


take my hand and take my heart

by immortalcockroach (juggyjones)



Series: in this universe, we're fighters [10]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 6x13, Bellarke Heart to Heart, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Mention of Bellamy Blake/Echo, Missing Scene, Post Season 6, implications of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 08:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20206774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/immortalcockroach
Summary: ‘I had a nightmare,’ she says. ‘I wanted to make sure you’re safe.’‘You had a nightmare about me?’ His words sound like teasing but his voice is too empty, too lifeless for that to truly come across as such.‘I have nightmares about everyone. Tonight, you were the one who died.’Tonight, he died in her dreams. They don’t have a guarantee that tomorrow, he won’t die in her life.---or, clarke has a nightmare and needs to make sure bellamy is safe.





	take my hand and take my heart

**Author's Note:**

> title adapted from _heal_ by tom odell.
> 
> this was a prompt <s>that i slept on for months</s> that seemed to fit perfectly with the finale. it's a little sad, a little hopeful, and offers a little bit of healing that our heroes need. it's not necessarily romantic bellarke, so if you're not a big shipper it'll be fine. if you're a bit shipper, it'll be fine too, because it's very emotionally packed and very romantic if that's how you read it. 
> 
> no hating on echo. just a hint of things not being the best between her and bellamy right now.

‘How about now?’ A pistol is pressed to the temple of a man on his knees.

‘No, please – I can’t give you the information. I don’t even have it! Please, Russel—’

‘Not even now?’ The pistol is cocked. Loaded with bullets and ready to fire.

Clarke is begging, Bellamy is shaking, and Russel is holding a pistol to his head. They’re on the Eligius ship and Bellamy is gagged, his curly hair thick with blood pouring from someplace on his head, and his torso is filled with cuts and bruises. His dark eyes stare at her with intensity she’s never seen before, and he’s shaking, but he nods.

It’s almost as if he’s telling her _it’s okay, you can tell them, we’ll figure it out_. She looks at him and feels the burning in her eyes and her throat. _How do you give information you don’t have_?

Her gaze shifts back to the greying man with a laurel around his head and she shakes her head. ‘I don’t have it!’ Clarke cries out. ‘Russel, he’s done nothing, he doesn’t even know what we’re talking about!’

Russel cocks his head. His hand extends a little bit and pushes Bellamy’s head with the pistol. Bellamy closes his eyes in pain, but doesn’t let out a sound. He just suffers, in silence, waiting for Clarke to do what’s right.

Trusting her. With his life.

Except she can’t do anything.

‘In that case,’ Russel says, ‘he’s of no use to me, then.’

Bellamy opens his eyes. He blinks, long, and Clarke can see he knows what’s coming.

Clarke jumps in front of the pistol. Russel fires. Everything goes white. The bang echoes and her body lands with a thud, but it’s not the only one.

Nothing burns. Nothing aches. There is no wound on her apart from where she landed on the floor, with Russel’s pistol in her hands.

Next to her, Bellamy’s bleeding through a circular wound in his temple, eyes wide open.

Staring at her.

Empty.

‘_NO!_’

Clarke shoots out of her bed and the duvet falls off of it, and she stumbles over it and falls, too, her knees burning. Her breathing is ragged and cold sweat caught in her eyelashes, and she closes her eyes to remind herself of what really happened. The hands on the tiles ground her. It was Madi, not Bellamy, and Russel never pulled the trigger.

Nobody died.

‘Fuck,’ she murmurs. ‘_Fuck_.’

Her back rests against the bedframe, wooden and cold. She tilts her head back until it’s touching the mattress and pulls the duvet off the floor and closer to her. She might’ve been sweating from her nightmare, but outside, on Sanctum, it’s close to winter and it gets cold.

In her mind, the nightmare flashes again. She sees Bellamy’s eyes, dead and empty, and the dread from it fills her as if it was real.

It takes some time, but eventually Clarke calms down. Her breathing slows to a steady pace and the sweat soaks back into her skin, and her eyes get used to the darkness surrounding her. The sounds she’s hearing isn’t gunshots, or people grunting – it’s the heating inside her room that’s faulty and creaking every now and then. The floor underneath her is grounded to the planet, not floating in space, stuck in the atmosphere.

She’s on the ground, Russel has been put away, and she’s safe.

And so is Bellamy.

‘He’s safe,’ she whispers to herself. She closes her eyes and repeats it like a mantra. ‘He’s safe.’

They saved each other. They saved their people from the Primes and Sanctum, and they made themselves a new home, as much as they could. They saved the people of Sanctum by helping them build a new society, one that employs democracy the way they did on the Ark and their ancestors before them, not theocracy. There are no false gods.

They’re safe.

Somehow, Clarke finds it hard to believe. If anything, her twenty-odd (who would even know at this point?) years of life have taught her to trust her instinct.

They should be safe, but Clarke doesn’t feel like they are. There was Octavia being stabbed and disappearing from Bellamy’s arms only days ago, and there’s Hope who appears to be Diyoza’s daughter, in her late teens or early twenties, and who still hasn’t woken up. There’s still things happening. The Anomaly, whatever it wants from them, is still a threat.

If Octavia could disappear before three people’s eyes, what gives Clarke the insurance that Bellamy is safe?

‘He’s safe,’ she repeats. Then, softly, ‘Fuck.’

She gives in with a defeated sigh. After everything she’s been through, although she knows there’s no real reason to doubt his safety, that’s not enough for her. Besides, it’s not like she’s going to sleep anytime soon.

That’s the excuse she tells herself when she switches her pyjamas for some normal clothes and a leather jacket, locking the door to her room as she leaves it. The autumn is chilly but the breeze feels almost soothing on her face – a stark reminder of her survival.

Clarke knows they’ll never have complete peace. There will always be someone on the other side, fighting for their own cause, and they’ll always end up having to defend themselves. She can only hope it’ll be a while since they need to do that again.

Outside, Sanctum is quiet. There’s an odd person here and there and they don’t seem to pay much attention to her. Most of them are people from Sanctum, who hardly recognize her, and few are the people of Wonkru or Eligius, who don’t really recognize her, either. She walks freely, for a couple of minutes, until she reaches a familiar house.

It’s one of the first ones they discovered when they arrived. Close to the palace, where she resides—she’s still trying to learn from the Primes’ way of living—and close to the heart of Sanctum. If people notice her standing here, they don’t show it. The suns have been out for only a couple of hours and even the people on the street are on their way home.

At first glance, she doesn’t see any lights in the house. It’s quite compact for two people, but Clarke knows Bellamy and Echo are managing. She moves a little to the side, wanting to check if maybe she could see some silhouettes moving, when she notices a light on the first floor, soft enough to only be a candle.

Bellamy doesn’t leave candles lit unless he’s using them, because they’re a fire hazard.

This should be enough for her. The candle is lit and he is safe.

Clarke still knocks.

A few moments pass and she hears footsteps on the other side of the door, followed by rustling of chains and a cough. They open with a creak and reveal Bellamy’s face.

‘Clarke?’ His voice is weak and unsure, almost as if he doesn’t know if this is really happening.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Can I come in for a second? I mean it’s fine if you’re busy or—’

‘No, that’s fine. Come on in.’

Bellamy steps aside and lets her walk past him, closing the door and putting a chain over it. He leads her into the living room on the upper floor and he sits on a couch while she plops down into the armchair, taking him in.

Mostly, she is relieved that he is safe and alive and breathing without difficulties. However, that’s where her relief stops – the candlelight falls on his appearance with gentleness, giving him a soft edge, but not even that manages to hide the roughness he comes with. His beard is untrimmed and a little sharp around the sideburns, with hair finally starting to resemble the messy curls she was so used to before. But it’s unkempt, and his skin is dry and his eyes seem half-closed and he looks like he’s crashing, but can’t sleep.

He looks like he’s falling apart.

Clarke’s heart breaks for him, but there is nothing she can do about it that she isn’t doing already.

‘Where’s Echo?’ she asks.

Bellamy’s fingers tap against the glass coffee table, drawing in circular motion. He doesn’t raise his eyes to meet hers, like he usually would. ‘She went with some people to the forest, to try informing Gabriel’s kids that the Primes are gone. I thought you knew.’

‘It must’ve slipped my mind,’ Clarke admits honestly. ‘I’ve been a little preoccupied with Madi and helping Jackson.’

He nods, distantly. Clarke finds himself entranced by the dance of his fingers, but snaps out of it.

‘I had a nightmare,’ she says. ‘I wanted to make sure you’re safe.’

‘You had a nightmare about me?’ His words sound like teasing but his voice is too empty, too lifeless for that to truly come across as such.

‘I have nightmares about everyone. Tonight, you were the one who died.’

Tonight, he died in her dreams. They don’t have a guarantee that tomorrow, he won’t die in her life.

Clarke shakes the thought out of her mind. She rests her back against the chair, trying to relax in a place that doesn’t belong to her – a place, despite Bellamy’s presence, feels like she’s intruding. Knowing him and Echo have been together all these years is still something she hasn’t fully had the time to comprehend, not in the chaos that has been going on ever since they came back.

Bellamy breaks the silence. ‘I have nightmares, too.’

She waits. He finally lifts his chin and looks at her with the same intensity he did in the dream, the same resignation between the lines.

A shiver runs down Clarke’s spine and she has to bury the instinct to reach out and take his hand into hers.

‘Usually I just dream about all the things that might be happening to Octavia. She isn’t dead, I know it. I know it,’ he repeats, as if convincing himself. ‘I see things you and I have done, too – the Mountain Men coming after me with the kids, we’ve—we’ve… We have a lot of bad things, Clarke.’

‘I know. The things we needed to survive.’ Clarke’s eyes fall onto her hands in her lap, as she fiddles with her fingers. ‘They haunt me, too.’

The silence that falls is heavy, but not because of what’s between them – it’s heavy because they understand, and nobody else does. Not even Echo, and Clarke knows that’s been a problem lately.

‘I’ve been trying to find things that could be useful about Octavia in the few of Josephine’s memories I still have,’ she says. ‘It’s not much, but it’s giving me a rough idea of where I should look, and—’

‘Thank you,’ he interrupts. She looks up to find him sitting closer to her, and his hand finds hers. ‘I know you have a lot on your plate. I really appreciate that you’re doing this.’

Clarke turns her palm so it faces his, and she gives his hand a light squeeze. _I’m here for you_, she thinks. Then she says, ‘I’m here for you, Bellamy. You know that. If I can help, as little as I can manage, I will. I wish I could do more.’

The corners of Bellamy’s mouth tug upwards, just a little bit, just enough to let her know he appreciates it. It’s not a smile and it’s hardly even a ghost of one, but there’s a light in his eyes that she sees a little clearer now, and maybe that matters more. ‘I know. I appreciate it. Even if you’re here just so I could have someone to talk to, I—’

When his voice cracks, he lets his head fall. Clarke is a little confused by the statement – does he not have Echo to talk with? Or anyone he’s been hanging out for the past six years? She feels a little sting of jealousy that she’s been having since they came back, when she realized things _have _changed.

She doesn’t let it get to her. Instead, she leans closer to him, close enough to put an arm around his shoulder and gently pull him into a hug. ‘Whenever you need me, I’m here for you, even if it’s in the middle of the night.’

Bellamy lets out a coarse laugh. ‘Me too, apparently.’

His arms find their way to her back and he pulls her even closer, closing the space between them. When he buries his head in her shoulder, Clarke feels his body lose some tension. He smells like it’s been a while since he showered, and maybe he hasn’t since Echo left. She makes a mental note to look after him, too, and spend more time with him to make sure he doesn’t fade away.

‘You’ve always understood me best,’ he murmurs into her shoulder, so quietly she almost thinks she misheard him. ‘You’re the only person I could always talk to.’

She smiles, with closed eyes. _Some things haven’t changed._

He creates some space between them, just enough so he could look her in the eye but still not break the contact between her arms and his hands. His expression looks a little lighter, a little better. ‘I’m glad I have you back.’

Clarke smiles, again. ‘I’m glad I’m not dead, too.’

The silence, this time, isn’t heavy at all. It feels as if something has been lifted, almost. She knows that this conversation offered them reassurance that they can still count on each other, no matter what, even if it isn’t a matter of life or death. If it’s just a nightmare, they can reach out to the other. If they feel uneasy, they can talk about it without judgement.

For a while, she thought he had that in other people, that he replaced her in times of peace. She underestimated him; she didn’t let herself believe that he cares about her as much as she cares about him.

After all, he _is _the reason she’s alive.

Clarke feels an overwhelming surge of emotion and it becomes too hard to keep the eye contact, and she glances to the unkempt hair of his. Her fingers reach his face and she moves some of them away, tucks them behind his ear, the way he did all those years ago when he told her everything would be okay.

It wasn’t then, but this time, it might.

She smiles at him, with her whole heart. ‘We’ll get through it. We’ll find Octavia, okay? I’m not letting you do this on your own.’

He’s not on his own, but without her, they both know it’s almost the same.

Bellamy smiles. Truly, honestly smiles, and Clarke’s heart mends a little. ‘I know.’

_Together_, is what they don’t say, but it’s almost as if they do.

And maybe bit by bit, they’ll help each other finally heal.

**Author's Note:**

> i sincerely hope you enjoyed this! it was definitely one of the favourite prompts to write. i love angsty but soft bellarke, honestly, and i wish we had a scene like this on the show.
> 
> if you want to request a fic, just send me an ask on tumblr ([bellarkesgodson](https://bellarkesgodson.tumblr.com/)). now hopefully i'll actually get working on my bellarke fic bingo card oops


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